The deaf man must carry this world of silence about with him always, and it leads him into strange performances. I know a deaf man who went to a church service. He could hear nothing of the sermon, but he felt something of the glory of worship, and when the congregation stood up to sing my deaf friend felt that here was where he could help.
“Just as I am, without one plea,” announced the preacher, and the deaf man’s wife found the place in the hymn book. He sang along with the rest and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, one of the penalties of the Silent Country is that its inhabitants can rarely keep in step with the crowd. My friend did not realize that at the end of each verse the organist was expected to play a short interlude before the next verse started. There has never seemed to me to be any reason for these ornamental musical flourishes; they merely keep us from getting on with our singing.
The deaf man knew nothing of all this. He was there to finish the singing of that hymn. It is a habit of the deaf to go straight to the end, since there is no reason why they should stop to listen. So he started in on the second verse as all the rest were marking time through that useless interlude, and he sang a solo:
He sang with all his power, he was in good voice and his heart was full of the glory of the service. He was never a singer at best, and the voice of a deaf person is never musical. This hard, metallic voice cut into that interlude much like the snarl of a buzz saw. His wife tried to stop him, but he could not quite get the idea, and he sang on. It is rather a curious commentary on the slavery to habit which most intelligent human beings willingly assume that this one earnest man, just as little out of step, nearly destroyed the inspiration of that church service. The unconscious solo would have taken all the worship from the hearts of that congregation had it not been for the quick-witted organist.
Some human beings have risen to the mental capacity of animals in understanding and conveying a form of unspoken language. It may be “instinct,” “intuition,” or what you will, but in some way they are able to convey their meaning without words. I have found many such people in the world of silence. The organist possessed this power. Before the deaf man had sung five words she had stopped playing her interlude, had caught the time of what he was singing, and was signaling the choir to join her. By the time they reached the end of the second line at “one dark spot” the entire congregation was singing as though nothing had happened. The minister, too, sensed the situation, for at the end of the verse, before the deaf man could make another start, he said: